Porsche Penske Motorsport’s Laurens Vanthoor leads the 24 Hours of Daytona with just over four hours remaining, just under 10 seconds ahead of Kevin Magnussen in the #24 BMW M Hybrid V8.
The #7 car pitted in the 18th hour with Vanthoor’s teammate, Nick Tandy taking the reins from Felipe Nasr, following the fellow Porsche – the #6 – with Matt Campbell taking the seat vacated by Kevin Estre.
Scott Dixon in the #60 Acura Meyer Shank Racing then led, with Tandy and Campbell duelling for position behind. Running side-by-side into the horseshoe, Campbell prevailed into the second horseshoe, who then took the lead when Dixon pitted, the IndyCar man rejoining in fourth place.
Philipp Eng, in the #24 BMW, was able to reduce the gap to the Porsches to 25s, but Campbell was able to stretch a further 10 seconds out on that.
At the start of lap 19, Campbell pitted, and on his first flying lap out, spun at T1, spin-turning the car to get himself back onto the course.
Dixon was now leading on the track, with Tandy net leader as a result of the Kiwi not yet pitting.
With the yellow flags now out, Campbell and Dixon would pit, followed by Kevin Magnussen, now in Eng’s place.
Tandy retained his advantage as the cautionary period reached 20 minutes, as green flags would eventually wave with a shorter yellow period coming soon after.
After the caution, Magnussen caught and passed Campbell. He then closed the gap to Tandy in the lead, with it standing at under 2 seconds when Tandy pitted to hand over to Vanthoor.
With Magnussen gradually closing in on L. Vanthoor, Mathieu Jaminet in the sister #6 Porsche is just under 5 seconds behind the Dane. In fourth is the #60 Meyer Shank Acura ARX-06 of Colin Brain, but he’s around 40 seconds or more off the lead group.
Herta in the wars as Cameron takes ascendency in LMP2
Job van Uitert in the #8 Tower Motorsports car was in-front at the start of this period, around 10 seconds ahead of the #4 CrowdStrike Racing car of Toby Sowery.
With the gap between the pair closing to just over seven seconds, Sowery pitted and was replaced by another IndyCar driver in Colton Herta, followed by the #99 AO Racing, with Kevin Rasmussen beginning a new stint, and in the process, taking over the lead.
Herta then endured a disaster with a crash, causing his rear wing to detach. Able to limp back to the pits, the car was repaired, but dropped to eighth spot with #99 retaining top spot, with Dane Cameron now at the wheel.
In GTD, Marvin Kirchhofer led in the #13 AWA after Scott Andrews [#80 Lone Star Mercedes] Pier Guidi [#21 Ferrari] and Misha Goikhberg [#78 Forte Lamborghini] all spun off separately of each-other at T1, the trio all hitting the barriers.
